Number of abortion clinics dwindles under new law
AUSTIN, Texas — The last abortion clinic in the vast, impoverished Rio Grande Valley closed Thursday, along with the sole remaining clinic in the 400-mile stretch between Houston and the Louisiana border, posing a tall obstacle to women seeking to end pregnancies across a wide swath of the nation’s second-largest state.
The closures in McAllen and Beaumont bring to 19 the number of clinics that have shut down since Texas lawmakers adopted tough new abortion restrictions last summer. Twenty-four clinics remain to serve the state of 26 million people, and more closures could happen after additional restrictions take effect later this year.
Lawmakers required all abortion doctors to have admitting privileges at a hospital within 30 miles, all abortions to take place in a surgical facility and all women seeking abortion-inducing medications to make four clinical visits.
Those rules made it impossible for the clinics in Beaumont and McAllen to stay open, said Amy Hagstrom Miller, CEO of Whole Woman’s Health.
Antiabortion lawmakers said the regulations are necessary to protect women’s health, but abortion-rights groups have sued the state claiming the restrictions are medically unnecessary and intended to shut down all Texas clinics that offer abortion services.
“Closing our clinics hurts us. But more importantly, it hurts the communities we have served,” Miller said during a news conference Thursday. “We have done everything possible to keep our clinics open, but we are simply unable to survive.”
The Whole Woman’s Health clinics in Beaumont and McAllen had been open since 1973, when abortion was made legal by the U.S. Supreme Court’s Roe vs. Wade decision.
The closest abortion clinic to Beaumont is in Houston. And for women in the Rio Grande Valley, the nearest clinics will be in Corpus Christi and San Antonio, a journey that means passing through immigration checkpoints that require U.S. identification or visas.
The admitting privilege requirement has become a favored tool for antiabortion lawmakers across the country to close clinics. In Mississippi, a federal judge has blocked enforcement of a similar requirement because it would shut down the state’s last clinic.
Most doctors do not have or need admitting privileges, and hospitals usually grant them only to doctors who routinely have patients in need of hospital care. The Texas Hospital Association opposed the requirement, saying admitting privileges were not necessary to provide women emergency care from abortion complications.